14

When I separated from Sinon and left the cave, the red of the sunset was almost entirely gone, with only a purple brushstroke across the sky to mark the dying of the light.

I’d been under the impression that GGO was stuck in a perpetual twilight, so it was a surprise to me that night could actually fall. I looked up at the sky. Then again, it was nearly ten PM in the real world, so it made sense that it would be dark here.

There were hardly any stars in the sky. In this world, a large-scale space war in the distant past had doomed civilization, leaving humanity to scrape by on the technological remnants of its former glory. Obviously, they hadn’t destroyed the stars in their war, but the emptiness of the sky almost made it seem that way.

A small light cut across from the southwest, splitting the infinite darkness.

It was not a shooting star, but a satellite—launched by the old civilization, still mindlessly sending information without anyone to manage it anymore.

It was nine forty-five PM, which made this the seventh Satellite Scan since the start of the Bullet of Bullets final competition.

I turned away from the vast sky, pulled out a thin terminal from my pouch and touched the screen. The panel lit up and displayed a map of the area. Nearly the entire northern half of the island that served as the battleground was desert, and aside from the occasional rocky outcropping and oasis, the terrain was flat. Not a place that suited snipers—or so I thought.

I put my back to the side of the rock I’d just emerged from, taking care to hide myself as much as possible so I could study the terminal in peace. A few seconds later, a little blip appeared in the center of the map without a sound. I didn’t need to touch it to know that it represented me. As Sinon was lying in wait in the nearby cave, she didn’t appear on the map, of course.

To my surprise, in the desert zone there were no other dots for living players within five kilometers. It made sense that Death Gun—or ‘Steven’—would not appear, thanks to his Optical Camo, but I had been expecting a gathering of enemy players who had figured out our hiding spot, ready to toss their grenades into the cave.

Instead, there was a scattering of dark gray blips throughout the desert. They were the players who had already been eliminated, but it was eerie to know that so many bodies were lying around, yet we hadn’t heard any sounds of battle whatsoever.

I zoomed out. There was one dot about six kilometers to the southwest. Tapping the dot told me that it belonged to Yamikaze. That name was familiar.

Farther to the south, in the ruined city, there were two dots approaching one another and a host of gray spots. The survivors were No-No and Ferney. A further zoom-out showed the entire island on the panel. But to my surprise, there were no other lit dots. Even the dot that had set up shop on the peak of the southern mountain at the very start of the game, the one Sinon had derisively called “Richie the Camper,” was now gray. There were two blips of the same color nearby, which suggested that he’d been teamed up on.

That meant, if you included Sinon and Death Gun, who wouldn’t show up on the screen, there were currently six players left on the vast island.

Naturally, I couldn’t deny the possibility that other players were hiding in caves or water, but unless they had a special ability like Death Gun, they wouldn’t be able to receive the satellite information, either. Not many could afford to sit through the climactic stage of a battle without knowing what was happening…

“…Ah!”

As I stared at the terminal, lost in thought, something changed significantly on the screen. It wasn’t more dots, but the opposite. The two blips clustered in the city both went dark at once.

My guess was that until the scan started, neither of the two knew the other was there. Perhaps they were surprised to see on the screen that an enemy was just beyond the wall, and they each threw a desperate grenade at the other, blowing themselves up. If that was the case, it had to be a bitter end for contestants who had fought hard to get this far. I just barely resisted the urge to say a brief prayer in their memory.

At any rate, this meant that only four players were left out of the original thirty. But out of those, only Yamikaze and I showed up on the map. Finally, I did a quick count of lit dots and shaded dots on the map. When I was done, I gasped.

“Wha…”

I had to recount. Then again. But the number did not change. There were two white dots on the terminal screen for survivors. And twenty-four in gray for the losers.

The numbers didn’t add up. Even if you added the hidden Sinon and Death Gun, that only made twenty-eight. With Pale Rider, who didn’t show up because he was shot by the black pistol and disconnected, that was twenty-nine. One short.

Were my assumptions incorrect, and one more person was hiding?

Or had Death Gun managed to “erase” another combatant?

The possibility of the latter was slim. After all, Death Gun’s real-life accomplice had to be either in Sinon’s house or in her immediate environment. I didn’t want to think of her as bait, but as long as Death Gun was going after her, his accomplice couldn’t leave to travel to a different target.

No, wait… Maybe I’m missing something huge here…

No good. I couldn’t be waffling about this. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook off the chill settling in on me.

When I opened my eyes again, the dots on the screen were blinking—the satellite was nearly done with its pass. It was possible—no, likely—that there wouldn’t be a next scan. I offered the satellite a silent thanks for its work, then looked at my surroundings. Nothing moved or shone in the gloomy desert. I returned the terminal to my pouch and headed back for the cave.

The sniper with her massive rifle was waiting for me just around the curve, rather than in the very back with the buggy.

“How was it? What’s the situation?!” Sinon demanded, her tied-up hair waving on either side of her face.

I gave her a concise but accurate account. “In the middle of the scan, two players knocked each other out, which probably leaves just four. You, me, Yamikaze, and Death Gun, who didn’t show up. Yamikaze’s about six kilos to the southwest. Death Gun’s probably somewhere in the desert, on his way here. And there might be one other person hiding in a cave, like us.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say that the missing person might possibly be a second victim of Death Gun’s. Sinon didn’t seem to pick up on it.

She muttered, “Only four or five left,” but accepted it at once. “It’s already been an hour and forty-five minutes, though. Last time it took just about two hours, so the pace fits the prior pattern. It’s almost a mystery to me that no one came by to toss a grenade into the cave, though…”

“Yeah. Maybe Death Gun was wandering around searching for us, and he picked everyone else off with that rifle of his. There were plenty of gray dots in the desert.”

“In that case, he’s going to wind up with the Max Kills prize,” she said unhappily, then switched topics. “The problem now is Yamikaze. The only other survivor that appeared on his screen would be you, so he’s got to be on his way over.”

“I recognize the name…Is he good?” I asked.

Sinon gave me an exasperated look. “He was the runner-up of the last tournament. Plays an extreme Agility build; they call him the Run and Gun Demon.”

“Run and…Gun?”

“Just what it sounds like—a playstyle where you run around and shoot. He uses an ultralight Calico M900A submachine gun. He came in second to Zexceed’s rare gun and armor, but some say Yamikaze’s actually the better player when it comes to skill.”

“So…he might be the best on GGO’s Japanese server…?”

It made sense that someone who had lasted this long would be very good. I frowned, wondering what to do.

Sinon spoke up, her voice resolute. “Listen…if your conjecture that it’s actually an accomplice doing the killing in real life is correct, then Death Gun can only kill me right now. After all, the accomplice has to be staked out at my place to do it.”

“…”

I was more than a little surprised. I stared at the little, catlike face across from me.

An unfamiliar killer had his sights on her unprotected body in real life. The horror of that situation was, in a way, even greater than the shackles of the NerveGear and game of death that I endured. But Sinon’s dark eyes, even with her fright, showed a will to face that threat directly.

I was at a loss for words, so Sinon calmly continued, “That means we don’t need to seriously worry about Death Gun killing Yamikaze. So, while I mean no disrespect to him, perhaps we could let Yamikaze be our decoy? If Death Gun shoots him with the L115, we’ll know his location. That’s a more solid plan than having you be the bait. Plus…depending on how you think of it, that’s kind of what I’m doing now.”

I took her last sentence to mean that she was using her real body as a lure to keep Death Gun’s accomplice present. While her voice did quaver a bit at the end, the willpower needed to say it at all was impressive.

“…You’re real tough, Sinon,” I murmured. The sniper blinked, then her lips pursed a bit.

“No…I’m just trying not to think about it. I’ve always been good at shutting my eyes to scary things,” she remarked ruefully. “At any rate, what do you think of the plan? I think we ought to make use of whatever we can at this point.”

“Yeah…you’re right, I agree. For the most part, I’m in…but…”

I bit my lip, then elaborated on the concern that had been eating away at me for the last few minutes. “The thing is…there’s one thing that worries me. I counted up all the survivors and losers in the last satellite scan, but there were only twenty-eight. Even if one is Pale Rider, that leaves us one short.”

“…You mean…Death Gun might have killed someone else?” Sinon’s eyes went wide, but she promptly shook her head. “Th-that’s impossible! I mean, his accomplice is after me, right? It’s not virtual reality—he can’t just teleport anywhere he wants. Unless you’re trying to say that one of the other contestants just so happens to live in my apartment building!”

“Right…that’s the point…But if you think about it, it’s a bit unnatural…”

I glanced at my watch to see that two minutes had already passed since the scan. I tried to explain what was on my mind in as short a time as possible. “Only thirty minutes passed between when Death Gun shot Pale Rider at the bridge, and when he tried to shoot you near the stadium. That means that in the real world, Pale Rider’s home is within thirty minutes’ travel from yours. Maybe it’s not impossible, but it seems awfully convenient to me.”

“But…that’s the only possibility, isn’t it?” Sinon asked, her brows furrowed.

I revealed the thought that had plagued me since the Satellite Scan. “No, it’s not. What if…Death Gun has more than one accomplice? If he has a strike team with multiple members, he could have one of them on standby, ready to kill you, at the same moment he’s busy killing someone else. That means we can’t deny the possibility that Yamikaze might be another target.”

“…!”

She sucked in a sharp breath and clutched her sniper rifle tighter. The pale face floating in the gloom shook slightly.

“N-no…You mean there are three or more people working together to commit these horrible crimes?”

“…I know there are at least ten surviving members of Laughing Coffin. And they were locked in the same prison for half a year in SAO. They easily could have traded real-life contact information…even planned out this whole horrible strategy in all of the time they had there. I doubt that all ten of them are in on this…but there’s no proof that there’s only one accomplice.”

“…Why would they…Why would they go to such lengths to keep PKing…? Why, when they were finally released from that horrible game…?” she whimpered.

I wrung the answer from my dry, painful throat. “Maybe…it’s the same reason I decide to be a swordsman, and you decide to be a sniper…”

“…”

I thought she would be angry, but Sinon only bit her lip. Her skinny body stopped trembling, and her navy blue eyes turned hard and resolute. “If that’s the case…we can’t let them win. I just said they were PKing, but I take that back. There are plenty of people who PK in this game, and I’ve joined squadrons who did that, but PKing has its own pride and determination. Poisoning an unconscious victim while they’re in a full dive isn’t PKing. It’s a sickening crime…It’s murder.”

“Yeah. That’s right. We can’t let them keep getting away with this. We’ll beat Death Gun in here, then make his accomplices pay for their crimes.”

That message was to myself as much as to her.

Yes, it was my primary duty. I had to start over from there. I killed two people on that night of madness, then another one later, and I had to atone for those stolen lives.

Normally this would be my battle alone, but now I’d involved the sniper girl in my sins. I stared at her.

If I was prioritizing her safety, I’d let Yamikaze and Death Gun fight, then when one of them was victorious, we’d both commit suicide, ending the tournament immediately. The worst possible scenario would be if the one person missing from the map wasn’t one of Death Gun’s victims but had been hiding in the river or caves after all. The tournament would not be over, and after defeating Yamikaze, Death Gun could appear and shoot Sinon’s temporary body before my eyes. Plus, if Yamikaze happened to be one of Death Gun’s targets, we’d only be increasing the number of his victims.

I had to fight. I had to protect Sinon, eliminate Yamikaze, and defeat Death Gun. It wouldn’t be easy, but it all had to be done…

Sinon herself interrupted my thoughts with her own offer: “I’ll take out Yamikaze.”

“Huh…?”

“He’s very good. Even you won’t be able to wipe him out instantly. And while you’re fighting, Death Gun will go after you.”

“Um…okay, but,” I mumbled. Sinon took her hand off the gun and slapped me lightly on the chest.

“Knowing you, you’ve probably got some idea in your head that you need to ‘protect me’ or something.”

I had no response; she was right on the money. A smile appeared on the sniper’s lips, followed by a grimace.

“Well, that’s crap. I’m the sniper, and you’re the spotter. If you help me out by revealing their location, I’ll take care of Yamikaze and Death Gun.”

I wasn’t sure what she called me, but I smirked and nodded anyway. “Okay. It’s up to you, then. They should both be real close by now. I’ll zip out in the buggy, and you pop out behind me and find a good sniping location.”

We were back to the original plan. Sinon nodded her agreement. She stared right back at me, her eyes serious once again, and said, “Let’s do it, partner.”

Sinon pressed her right eye to the scope of the Hecate II, which had been switched to night-vision mode.

Nothing moved on the vast desert for now. But Yamikaze was approaching from the southwest, and Death Gun would be converging from wherever he was hiding, she figured.

For her sniping position, Sinon chose the top of the rocky structure that housed the cave she’d been hiding in. She was hard to see from the ground, and she had a good vantage over the area. But there was a risk, too. Though it wasn’t particularly tall, the stone outcropping was over thirty feet off the ground at its peak, which meant that with her low Vitality stat, Sinon couldn’t just hop down safely. There was only one way up to the top, so if an enemy got close, she’d be shot before she could escape.

But this was the time to abandon any negative thoughts. She kept her mind flat, panning the rifle to her right.

In the center of her view, right at the top of a large dune, stood a silent figure. The occasional breeze rustled his long, back-length hair. The black fatigues covering his slender body melted into the night, making him look less like a gun-toting soldier than a fairy swordsman presiding over the desert of a fantasy realm.

Beyond Kirito was the trusty steed that had taken them into the desert from the ruined city—the three-wheeled buggy. There was hardly any gas left when he took it out of the cave, so it was probably done for good. But the buggy had performed its final task admirably. Thanks to the cover of its large chassis, Kirito could be seen easily, but would be difficult to snipe from the north.

To the south of him was the rock where Sinon hid, and her vision was equally limited. That meant that if Death Gun shot with the L115, it would be from the west or the east. Given that Yamikaze was most likely approaching from the west, he would be coming from the east. Kirito had already come to the same opinion, as his girlish face was turned to the pale moon appearing through the thick, trailing clouds.

Death Gun would probably shoot Kirito with the .338 Lapua Magnum, rather than the electric stun round. If the shot landed on his head or heart, he would die instantly. If it hit one of his limbs, he would lose half his HP from the impact. But evasion would not be easy, either. Not only would Death Gun’s first shot not give away a bullet line, the enemy’s Metamaterial Optical Camo meant that he could get into sniping position while invisible. He couldn’t get too close, as he’d still leave visible footprints in the sand, but it was clear that he held an overwhelming advantage at this point.

But if anyone can do it, it’s you. You beat the Untouchable dodging game on your first try, and you cut my point-blank Hecate bullet in two. You can dodge it, Kirito, Sinon thought, setting her rifle back in position.

Her job was to give Kirito all the concentration he could muster. In order to do that, she had to eliminate the incredibly agile attacker Yamikaze as he approached from behind, as soon as she could.

If she had enough time and a safe way to do it, she could explain the situation to Yamikaze, and perhaps convince him to evacuate or assist them. But it would be very difficult to convince anyone that real murder was taking place during the BoB final. Even Sinon would have laughed off everything that Kirito had told her, if she hadn’t come face-to-face with the chilling sight of that black pistol pointed at her face-first.

So she had to shoot now. In a tournament without Zexceed, she had to take down the player everyone agreed was the most likely champion, with a single shot.

…Am I even capable of that?

Sinon fought off the encroaching hesitation and fear as she scanned the desert with scope and naked eye alike.

Her attempted shots atop the buggy while they were escaping the city were pathetic. She had missed the cloaked player by a mile, and it was sheer coincidence that she had hit the truck’s gas tank at all. All the pride she had built up in the game had evaporated in that instant.

As Sinon the sniper, if she racked up kills, honed her craft, and one day won the BoB, then Shino Asada, real-world girl, would find the same strength. She would shed her fear of guns, no longer remember the events of her past, and finally have a normal life. That had been her belief ever since Kyouji Shinkawa had invited her to play GGO.

But perhaps that desire was just a little bit off-target.

At some point, she began to think of Sinon and Shino as separate people within her mind. There was strong Sinon and weak Shino. But that was a mistake. Sinon still had Shino’s weakness within her. It was why she trembled in fear at Death Gun’s Black Star and missed her shot.

Both of them were her. She only noticed this once she had seen the mysterious boy named Kirito. He had to be the same way in real life. He had to resist his own weakness and fight every day to be strong—even without a lightsword at his waist.

In that case, Sinon’s strength had always been inside of Shino.

I’ll fire this bullet as Shino. The same way I did in that incident five years ago.

She’d been running from that moment this whole time. She tried to forget, to erase it, to shut her eyes, to paint over the memories.

But that’s over now. I’ll face my memory, my sin, head-on. I’ll go back to that moment so I can start walking from there. That’s the moment I’ve been waiting for all this time, I think.

If that’s the case…then this is that moment.

Through the scope, Sinon’s right eye caught sight of a figure moving at high speed: Yamikaze.

Her finger touched the trigger. No pressure on it yet. This would be a one-chance shot. She didn’t have time to move and reset her locational data.

If she missed, Yamikaze would charge on Kirito first. Even Kirito couldn’t handle Death Gun and Yamikaze together. He would fall from one of their attacks. If Death Gun downed Yamikaze, the reaper would turn his Black Star on Sinon again. The 7.62 mm virtual bullet would hit Sinon, and the accomplice waiting in the real world would see it on the stream and administer the fatal drug to Shino’s body, stopping her heart.

That all meant that Shino’s actual life depended on this shot. Just as it had once before.

Oddly enough, her heart was calm. Maybe it was just because she couldn’t fully process the situation. But that wasn’t the whole story. Something, someone, was giving her strength. The warmth she felt in the fingertips of her freezing, numb hand belonged to…

…the Hecate II. Her indispensable counterpart, the weapon that had pulled her through countless battles.

…Oh, right. You’ve always been here with me. Not just in Sinon’s arms…but by Shino’s side as well. Even when I couldn’t see you, you’ve been there, encouraging me.

Please…I am weak. Give me your strength. The strength to stand, and walk again.

Through the weeks and months of battles in the late Aincrad, the front-line warriors developed and mastered a number of extra-system skills.

There was reading ahead, the ability to predict an opponent’s first move in a duel, based on his sword position and center of weight. There was discernment, to predict the attack trajectory of long-distance monster or human attacks based on eye location. There was hearing, pinpointing locations of approaching enemies out of the midst of the ambient sound mix. Misleading was taking advantage of the monster’s AI patterns to put them at a severe disadvantage. Then there was the switch tactic, which allowed for a group to heal individual members at the same time it attacked.

Out of all these skills that you’d never find in the player menu, the most difficult to master, and thus the one treated like some kind of occult magic, was hyper-sensing—the ability to detect spirit.

It worked quicker than eyesight or hearing to detect the presence of hostile enemies. In short, it was the ability to sense ill intent focused on the user.

Those who denied that this ability existed claimed that a person’s “killer intent” was physically impossible in the virtual world. After all, anyone in a full dive was perceiving the world solely through the digital signals the NerveGear passed to their brain. All information had to be represented as code, and there was no way to program something as dubious and imaginary as ill will or sixth sense.

Their argument made perfect sense. I certainly wasn’t going to argue that some kind of extrasensory skill really existed.

But over the two years I spent in that floating castle, on multiple occasions, I experienced what I could only describe as sensing bloodlust. Without seeing or hearing anything, I sensed that I was being targeted by someone, and hesitated from proceeding in the dungeon. As a matter of fact, I had saved my own life doing that.

I tried telling my “daughter” Yui about the experience this year. Yui was once a low-level subroutine of the Cardinal System that ran SAO. She assured me that in SAO and its replica system The Seed, there was no means of informing a player about the presence of other players or monsters outside of the standard five senses.

Therefore, it wasn’t possible to detect a foe waiting in perfect silence out of the line of sight, she said. I tried explaining something I’d secretly imagined for many years.

While diving into a VRMMO, a player is always connected to the version of himself that exists on the game server as data. While alone in the wilderness or a dungeon, only the player can observe that data. But if something else was waiting in ambush, it required twice as much data to be accessed from the server. Perhaps this extra processing, an infinitesimal lag in the data transfer, could be interpreted by the player as killer intent…

Yui put on an extraordinarily skeptical face and suggested that any server that lagged over a load that tiny ought to be put out to pasture for good. But she did add that theoretically, she could not state with 100 percent confidence that it was impossible.

In the end, chalking it up to ESP might have been a more convincing explanation.

But at the current point, the reasoning did not matter.

For the first time in my long history of VRMMO playing, I had nothing to rely upon other than this Hyper-Sensing skill.

Beyond the very last traces of light left in the sky, a hazy disc of pale white rose. The moon was full. But thanks the presence of heavy clouds, it was much darker than a full moon night in Alfheim. The curves of the dunes melted partially into the night sky, making it difficult to tell if the occasional jutting shadow was a cactus or a rock formation.

If someone was hiding at the foot of such an object and pointed a gun at me, I might not be able to detect the movement with my eyesight. To make matters worse, the foe who had to be watching now had the unbelievable advantage of invisibility. The only visual clue I could use was footprints in the sand. At a distance of over half a mile, such an effect might not even be displayed. It was a waste of time to try to spot it. Similarly, the sound of such an approach would be completely lost in the howling of the wind.

So just shut your eyes. Turn off your ears.

I closed my eyelids, shaking off my fear. One by one, I purged the whistling of the wind, the dry chill, and the scraping of the sand beneath my feet from my mind.

From the very far distance came a barely perceptible vibration. Someone was running at a very high speed. That would not be Death Gun. The distance was southwest. It had to be Yamikaze.

I withstood the urge to turn and look for him. Yamikaze was Sinon’s target; she would stop him. I eliminated even those footsteps from my mind. I focused all of my senses forward, utilizing them for nothing more than picking up any kind of change in the environment.

Oh…that’s right. Now I remember. On the night of the Laughing Coffin battle, it wasn’t movement or sound that tipped me off to their ambush. It was just “the willies.” I turned around on instinct alone to spot the silent, creeping shadows in the side branches of the cave.

What was the name of the man who led the ambush charge? It wasn’t PoH, the leader of the group. He probably wasn’t there at all. So it was one of the lieutenants. The man wielded an estoc, a very long, pointy sword. It had no blade, only a point for stabbing. The tiniest little glimmer of that deadly prong, snaking forward…

Did I kill him? No, I didn’t. When his HP got down to half, he switched with a comrade, drawing back to lick his wounds. As he retreated, he hissed something at me. It wasn’t some cocky boast. It was a halting, unpleasant hiss.

“…Kirito. Later, I will, kill you.”

That way of speaking. That attitude. The two reddened eyes that seemed to glow beneath his hood…

Something prickled between my eyebrows.

It was that feeling. The inorganic, clinging, freezing bloodlust—coming for me.

I opened my eyes.

Across the desert, at the foot of a cactus just a shade north of east, a tiny light glimmered.

The point of an estoc. The firing of a rifle.

I leaned to the right. But in fact, by the time I was starting the lean, a tiny mass of pure compressed damage bore down on my forehead. The flow of time shifted. It turned heavy, so heavy, freezing the air itself—

The tip of the rotating bullet barely grazed the temple of my tilting face, clipping my hair as it passed by.

“Aaaahhh!!”

I let out a roar, launching off the sand and leaving a lock of black hair floating in the wind.

He’s fast!!

Yamikaze’s speed through her scope exceeded Sinon’s imagination. His maxed-out AGI and extreme dashing skill produced a pace that matched his name: dark wind.

He wore a dark blue combat suit with a minimum of protection covering his small frame. He had no sidearm, and only a single plasma grenade on his belt. He didn’t even have a helmet on to cover his pointed, stern face. The thin M900A was cradled in his arms as he leaned forward into his sprint, and even at full speed he hardly shook at all. Only his legs appeared to move, a furious blur beneath him. The sight made him less a soldier than a ninja, and he showed no signs of slowing.

Even the quickest player normally ran a bit, then found cover, checked his surroundings, and ran again. For a sniper like Sinon, that brief pause was her best chance to attack.

But Yamikaze, though he used cacti and rocks as cover, never stopped behind them. He knew that a player with his level of agility was actually safest on the move at max speed.

…What to do? She could try to read ahead and fire in front of him. But Yamikaze didn’t sprint in a straight line. He circled around the dunes and occasionally over one, randomizing his movement so that predicting his course was impossible. She could also intentionally put the first shot at his feet, making him panic and giving her a chance to hit him when he dove for cover. But it was unlikely that such a plain, familiar trick would work on a hardened veteran like him. And once she used that first shot, he would have her bullet line to make use of. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to waste the sniper’s greatest opportunity like that…

Sinon couldn’t decide. But unlike when she was on the buggy, this indecision was not caused by fear and hesitation. Her mind was cold and clear. She had strength from the smooth wooden stock of the Hecate against her cheek, and the boy who kept his back to Yamikaze out of his faith in her.

I shouldn’t just fire a desperate shot at Yamikaze while he’s sprinting, she finally decided, letting her trigger finger relax just a bit.

That wasn’t sniping. When she shot, she needed absolute confidence. Yamikaze would stop just once before he got Kirito into the firing range of his M900A. That was her chance. She would wait for the final moment, when that opportunity presented itself.

The navy blue ninja was already within a kilometer of Kirito. As long as Kirito kept his back to the man and did not move, Yamikaze would assume that he hadn’t noticed his presence yet, and move to the hundred-meter range that AGI types preferred best.

I can wait until then. You hold out too, Kirito. Trust in me.

There were no communications items in the battle royale, so all Sinon could do was send her message mentally. But she felt like her thoughts reached him. That was the last thought she had. Her whole existence fused with the Hecate, her vision becoming the scope; her touch, the trigger. Even her breathing and heartbeat faded away. All she sensed was the speeding target and the crosshairs trained over his heart.

She didn’t know how long that state lasted.

Finally, the moment arrived.

A white light shot across her view from the lower right to the upper left: a bullet. It was not from the Hecate, obviously. It was a .338 Lapua bullet, shot by Death Gun from the east end of the desert. Kirito dodged the bullet, and it reached all the way near Yamikaze to the west, thanks to the L115’s incredible range.

Yamikaze clearly wasn’t predicting a massive bullet to come bearing down on him from the other side of Kirito, whom he assumed wasn’t aware of the racing pursuer. He didn’t hit the deck entirely, but he did crouch down and put on the brakes, swiveling over to a nearby rock.

This would be her one and only chance to snipe.

Her finger began to pull the trigger, largely following the will of the Hecate. The light green bullet circle appeared and shrank to the size of mere pixels in an instant. The point was centered on the middle of his chest. The trigger clicked, the hammer struck the firing pin, the .50 BMG cartridge exploded in the chamber, and a massive bullet instantly rocketed out at supersonic speed.

Through the scope, Sinon’s right eye met the wide, shocked gaze of Yamikaze as he noticed the Hecate’s muzzle flash. There was surprise, frustration, and a certain element of admiration there.

A bright flash erupted from the chest of the championship contender ninja. The avatar flew several yards into the air, tumbled onto the sand, and came to a stop, facing upward. At his side, his M900A and grenade fell, rattled loose by the impact. The DEAD tag began to rotate over his stomach, but Sinon did not see it—she was already turning 180 degrees with the Hecate.

Kirito!! she cried, a silent scream.

The swordsman in black was running straight for the pale moon rising beyond the horizon. His running form was not at all like Yamikaze’s compact machinery. His chest was puffed out and his chin was tucked down, legs pumping in a wide stride like some kind of dance. His right hand flashed and unhooked the lightsword from his belt. The violet-blue blade crackled and shone in the darkness.

Ahead of Kirito, an orange light momentarily flickered. Gunfire.

The curve of the lightsword’s swing intersected the bullet. Then again. And again. Now that he’d dodged the first shot, Kirito could see the bullet lines. No matter how many times he fired that bolt-action rifle, Death Gun could not break his target’s ultraquick reaction speed.

Sinon flipped the scope’s night-vision on and raised the magnification level to maximum, pinpointing the source of the gunfire.

There he was. Below a large cactus. She saw the recognizable sound suppressor poking out from the tattered cloth, as well as the cleaning rod affixed to the barrel. It was Death Gun, a true murderer, with his “Silent Assassin” L115A3.

She kept her eye open in the scope, battling the fear that suddenly welled up at the sight of him.

You’re not a ghost. You killed many people in Sword Art Online, and you’re sick enough to have plotted and carried out this ghastly plan after regaining your freedom—but you’re a human being who lives and breathes. That means I can fight you. I can hold to my belief that the Hecate and I are more powerful than you and your L115.

She pulled the bolt handle and reloaded the next bullet as she swung the crosshairs into the darkness of the cloak’s hood.

She could see flickering red eyes in the darkness. But it was not the hellfire of the dead. It was simply the lens of a full set of goggles. The only thing behind them was the face of an ordinary in-game avatar.

Sinon brushed the trigger and squeezed very slightly.

The next moment, Death Gun’s head twitched. He saw the bullet line. Thanks to her shot on Yamikaze seconds earlier, Sinon’s location was officially revealed. But that only meant they were on equal footing.

You’re on!!

Through the scope, Sinon saw Death Gun swivel his L115 toward her. A bloodred line extended from its black maw and chillingly caressed her forehead. Sinon didn’t wait for the circle to contract; she pulled the trigger.

The gun blasted at the same moment that Death Gun’s rifle spit a tiny flame. Sinon pulled her head away from the scope, catching sight of both her own bullet and the oncoming projectile with the naked eye. Their trajectories seemed to be perfectly aligned.

For a moment, she thought the bullets might collide, but that miracle did not happen. Instead, they very nearly touched in midair, throwing each round just slightly off course.

She heard a high-pitched kwang right next to her ear—the scope on the top of the Hecate vanished without a trace. She’d have been dead if her eye was still pressed into it. Death Gun’s .338 Lapua brushed Sinon’s right shoulder and passed behind her.

Meanwhile, the Hecate’s .50 BMG missed its mark as well, colliding with the L115’s receiver.

In GGO, each major gun part had its own durability rating. In normal use, only the barrel suffered degradation, which could be recovered with maintenance. However, if a bullet struck any part, it would suffer massive damage. Even then, it rarely resulted in total destruction, and repair was possible if some HP was left—just not when the delicate receiver got hit by a high-caliber blast. Such as in this case.

A small fireball erupted in Death Gun’s arms, and the center of the L115 burst into a mass of polygons. The stock, scope, and barrel all collapsed into the sand. Those parts could be reused, but the receiver was gone forever. The Silent Assassin was dead.

…Sorry, Sinon mentally whispered to the rare, powerful gun—not its owner—and pulled the bolt handle again. The next bullet slotted in with a reassuring clank, but without her scope, Sinon couldn’t pull off any more long-distance sniping.

“It’s up to you now, Kirito,” she murmured to the racing lightswordsman’s back.

There were less than two hundred meters between Kirito and Death Gun now. Even if he activated the Optical Camo, escape was impossible in this terrain. His footprints would remain, plainly visible.

The cloaked player slowly emerged from under the cactus and stood up, apparently not in any hurry. The lengthy barrel of his L115 still hung from his hand. He began to slide forward. Was he going to use it as a club? Kirito had cut a Hecate bullet in two with his lightsword; the man wouldn’t last a second.

The distance between them closed rapidly. Kirito charged forward, kicking up huge waves of sand. Death Gun scraped out footprints, practically dragging his feet. Thanks to her Eyesight skill, Sinon could see them both clearly, even without her scope.

Kirito drew the sword up over his shoulder as he ran, holding his free hand out in front of him. It was the stance for the astonishingly powerful thrust attack that she’d seen him do several times during the preliminary tournament.

Meanwhile, Death Gun moved the gleaming barrel to his left hand, brushing the mouth of the gun with his right. They would intersect in five seconds.

Sinon could see a live camera behind each player. None of the people watching the stream in GGO’s pubs or the outside world had any idea about Death Gun’s crimes or Kirito’s mission, but they had to be holding their breaths nonetheless. Sinon had forgotten everything in the world but what she was seeing with wide eyes.

Kirito raced onward, stomping the desert in half during his charge. Death Gun held the barrel level with both hands. A sharp light glinted there.

“Ah!!” Sinon gasped.

Death Gun spread his arms wide. The barrel flew out of his left hand behind him, detached and spinning. And in his right hand was a narrow metal pole that he had removed from the barrel—the cleaning rod. Was that his final weapon? The rod was just a maintenance tool. It didn’t even have offensive value. You could whack someone with it and not take down a single pixel of HP…

No…wait. That wasn’t a tool for cleaning out the barrel of his gun. The point of such an implement was supposed to be expanded with a little hole, but this was as sharp as a needle. A sword? But the base of the blade was barely a fraction of an inch across. Could he even do any damage with it? And more important, there were no metal blades in the world of GGO aside from combat knives.

But the lightswordsman did not stop, thrusting his glowing energy blade before him. Even atop her rocky outpost, Sinon could hear the jet-engine roar of the sword. The deadly point of its blade plunged toward the chest under the cloak. It lunged, reached out—but did not connect. Death Gun bent over backward, his upper half entirely level, as if he knew exactly when and how Kirito was going to attack.

All the force of Kirito’s thrust did nothing more than singe the air, vanishing harmlessly behind the target.

After his grand attack was evaded, the lightswordsman’s body froze for an instant. He moved again just as quickly, trying to leap forward to his right, but Death Gun’s right hand, still tilted parallel to the ground, snaked forward like it had a mind of its own. The two-foot metal rod plunged forward…

And sank deep into the black fatigues over his left shoulder.

“…Kirito!!” Sinon screamed, as a crimson visual effect splattered into the darkness like blood.

Just a second after pressing her phone to the payment pad to bring up the cashier sound, Asuna Yuuki was out of the taxi, shouting a hasty “Thanks!” over her shoulder

Facing the roundabout was a large building entrance that still had some of its lights on, despite being nearly ten o’clock. The automatic doors were off, naturally, but there was a small glass door nearby for nighttime entrance. She ripped open the door and plunged through.

Asune strode through the chill air of the lobby that smelled like disinfectant, and headed for the reception counter. Seijirou Kikuoka had already contacted the hospital, so when the nurse looked up, Asuna had the right message to deliver: “I’m Yuuki, meeting scheduled for Room 7025!”

She pulled her student ID from her pocket and slapped it on the counter. As the nurse took it and compared the photo to the real thing, Asuna busied herself studying the floor plan on the back wall.

“Asuna Yuuki. Here’s your visitor pass. Don’t forget to turn it in on your way out. You can reach the room via the elevator on the right…”

“Got it. Thank you!”

Asuna snatched the pass, bowed briefly and rushed off to the elevator, leaving the bewildered nurse behind. Kirito—Kazuto Kirigaya—was entered into the system as a routine checkup, not treatment or hospitalization, so she had to be wondering why Asuna was in such a hurry, but that wasn’t Asuna’s problem.

There was a turnstyle gate before the elevator, much like the kind at a train station. She swiped her pass and pushed through as soon as the metal bar rose. Only once she’d hit the UP button and jumped through the open door did she take a short breather.

Kazuto must have felt the same way a year earlier, when he was rushing to see Asuna after he’d freed her from the birdcage in ALO. He should be fine. Nothing had happened. She knew these things with her rational mind, but she couldn’t stop her heart from pushing her onward.

Ding. Ding. With each floor passed, the elevator rang pleasantly. It was only a seven-floor ascent, but it was taking an eternity.

“It’s all right, Mama,” a young voice echoed suddenly from the speaker of the cell phone she still clutched in her hands.

It was Yui, her AI “daughter” with Kirito. Yui’s core program was contained in a desktop machine in Kazuto’s bedroom, and when needed, she could dive into ALO as a Navigation Pixie, or speak to them through the phone in real life. She couldn’t stay present all the time or she’d drain the battery, but she’d been connected since Asuna left Dicey Café.

“Even the strongest foe can’t stop Papa. After all, he’s Papa.”

“…Yes. You’re right,” she whispered back into the mic, practically kissing it. At last, it felt like her freezing-numb fingers were thawing, but the nerves hadn’t left her yet.

Kirito had gone into GGO on Kikuoka’s request to investigate the mysterious “Death Gun.” Whoever was controlling his avatar was once a member of SAO’s killer guild, Laughing Coffin. And two people shot by Death Gun in the game had died in real life under mysterious circumstances.

Something was happening—that much was clear. Kikuoka claimed that Kazuto was in no danger in middive, but even he did not fully believe that the two deaths were a mere coincidence.

Ding. The elevator passed the sixth floor and gently slowed, coming to a stop on the seventh floor with another pleasant sound. As the door opened, Yui pointed out that he was fifty feet to the right, then after a left, another twenty-five feet. This time, Asuna ran at full speed through the empty halls.

She noted the metal plates to the sides of each spaced-out sliding door along the walls. 7023…24…25! She pressed her pass to the plate, the indicator turned from red to green, and the door opened.

It was a personal room coordinated in off-white. Right in the center was a density-adjusting gel bed of the kind that Asuna herself had once depended upon. The room’s partition curtains were drawn. Right in front was a menacing monitor. The various cords extending from the machine split apart here and there, ending in electrodes on the exposed chest of the boy lying on the bed. Around his head was a familiar silver crown: an AmuSphere.

Kirito! she was about to shout, sucking in a huge lungful of the warm room air. But before she could let it out, someone else’s voice echoed off the walls.

“…Kirigaya!”

Asuna nearly fell face-forward. She craned her neck right, noticing a simple metal-frame chair to the far side of the bed, previously hidden by the monitoring equipment. Someone was sitting on the chair.

She was wearing a white uniform and a nurse’s cap, and featured braided hair and fashionable glasses. It was the nurse. Now that she thought about it, Kikuoka had mentioned that someone was watching over Kazuto.

But she couldn’t resist an unhappy grumble at the fact that his security was a young and very pretty nurse, who was leaning over Kazuto’s shirtless form on the bed. That only lasted a moment, however. When the nurse looked up to see Asuna’s entrance, her face was a mask of nerves.

“Oh, are you Miss Yuuki? I heard you’d be coming—have a seat,” the nurse chattered huskily, getting up and motioning to the left side of the bed. Asuna hadn’t bothered to wait for the offer, already racing over and bowing briefly before she got a good look at Kazuto’s face.

His eyes were closed, naturally. But he wasn’t sleeping or unconscious. All five of his senses were isolated from the real world by the AmuSphere and taken to a far-off, alien realm. Meanwhile, the device intercepted all of the signals from brain to body, so his face and limbs were utterly still. Yet the moment Asuna saw Kazuto’s face, she could tell that what was happening on the inside was far from peaceful tranquility.

“What’s going on with Ki…Kazuto?!” Asuna asked, raising her head. The nurse, who had a name tag reading AKI, frowned and shook her head quickly.

“Don’t worry, he’s not in any physical danger. But his pulse just shot up to 130 a moment ago…”

“His pulse?” she murmured, and looked over at the heart monitor. The LCD panel featured a classic cardiogram graph of the kind you’d see in movies, and a readout that said 132 BPM. Right before Asuna’s eyes, the graph shot into sharp peak after peak.

It was not abnormal at all for the heart rate to rise while playing a VRMMO. After all, a player faced with a huge, terrifying monster while in a full dive was bound to get nervous, sending the pulse racing. In a way, that was what the games were meant to do.

But this was Kirito. The solo conqueror of Aincrad, the man who had risked death more than any other in a game chock-full of it. What circumstances in a safe, normal game could cause this reaction in him? In the year they’d been playing ALO together, Asuna had never once seen Kirito lose his cool.

What’s happening in there?

Asuna bit her lip, tracing a drop of sweat on his forehead with the tip of her finger. Suddenly, Yui’s voice rang out from the phone in her other hand.

“Mama, look at the touch-PC on the wall! I’ll patch the live footage from MMO Stream onto the screen!”

Asuna raised her head with a start. There was indeed a forty-inch flatscreen monitor on the wall facing the bed. Yui had somehow managed to connect to it wirelessly from Asuna’s phone, then activated the screen and set its browser to full-screen mode.

It was the exact same thing they were watching from the apartment inside ALO. In the top left was the rough logo of Gun Gale Online. Next to it, a narrow strip of text announcing that it was the exclusive livestream coverage of the third Bullet of Bullets battle-royale final.

On the right side of the screen was a list of player names. But most of the screen was taken up by a multiangle, multipicture visual feed. At this point, there were only two large windows left.

Both pictures showed a nighttime desert presided over by pale moonlight. It looked like a single, close-range battle, with cameras positioned behind either player. In the left window was a short, small avatar, clad in black fatigues darker than the night, long hair flapping in the wind. The player held a glowing purple sword in one hand, while the other dangled below. Dark red damage effects spilled out of one shoulder. The player’s name was listed in a small font below: KIRITO.

“That’s…Kirito…?”

The avatar was far different from the “black swordsman” of SAO and the spriggan he used in ALO. From behind, his delicate form looked exactly like a girl’s. But the stance and the way he held himself were undoubtedly Kirito.

On the other side of the bed, Nurse Aki wondered, “Does that mean that’s Kirigaya’s avatar, there? So while he’s right here, he’s controlling that character in real time?”

“That’s right. He’s in battle… I think that’s why his heart rate is so high,” Asuna replied immediately. But some things she couldn’t explain so easily. That Kirito had already suffered severe damage to his left shoulder—and that the person who did it to him was probably a murderous SAO survivor. On top of that, that the man might have actually killed two players from within GGO.

She turned to look at the right half of the screen, dreading what she would see.

As she expected, it was the back of the tattered cloak facing the camera. From behind he looked lifeless and lax. But Asuna could tell from experience that he had the stance of someone very familiar with virtual reality. She watched the cloaked player thrust out his hand, holding her breath.

“Wha…” she gasped, involuntarily.

He wasn’t holding the huge rifle she had seen earlier, near the bridge, nor the black pistol. It was just a narrow metal rod…

No. No, it wasn’t. It was tapered down from the bases, and pointed as sharp as a needle at the end. It was a sword. A weapon much like Asuna’s rapier, sharp at the end but without a cutting blade, meant for thrusting only.

“An estoc? Oh…oh…”

Asuna didn’t even realize she was speaking aloud. It was as though the estoc was jabbing right out of the screen and prodding her distant memories. There was…There was a major member of Laughing Coffin who used an estoc. But his name…What was his name?

Naturally, the person in the tattered cloak was not going to use the same alias as in SAO, the way that Kirito did. But Asuna couldn’t help but glance at the avatar’s feet.

Like Kirito’s, the player name displayed there was written in the Western alphabet.

STERBEN.

She stumbled over the name, not sure how it was meant to be pronounced.

“St…Ste…ben? Is that a typo of ‘Steven’…?”

“No…not quite, Mama,” Yui answered from her phone, at almost the same time that Nurse Aki said, “No,” herself. Asuna looked over in surprise to see the nurse’s fine eyebrows knitted in concern, her face more worried than before.

“That’s German. I know it because it’s a medical term. It’s pronounced more like shter-ben.”

“Shter…ben.”

Asuna had never heard the word before. After a moment’s hesitation, Nurse Aki rasped, “It means…‘death.’ In hospitals, it’s used…when a patient has passed away…”

All the hairs on Asuna’s arms stood on end. She tore her gaze away from the screen and over to the face of the boy lying on the bed.

“Kirito…”

Her voice was trembling so hard that she barely registered it as her own.

GGO was built and managed using the free VRMMO tool package known as The Seed.

The Seed was a very versatile and easy-to-use system, but there existed certain “black boxes” that even an administrator could not tamper with. Any title that had been open to the public for three months was automatically and irrevocably set to allow the conversion system that made it possible for players to bring over their characters from other games. In a similar fashion, while it was possible to fiddle with the settings of the pain-absorption system that prevented players from receiving pain signals, there was no way to disable it entirely.

Meaning that no matter how many bullets you took in GGO—even if they blew off an arm or a leg—the worst you would feel was numbness.

Which meant the pain in my shoulder, like a needle of ice penetrating it, was an illusion. In fact, the pain absorber even canceled out illusionary pain, so it wasn’t real at all. It was a memory, the return of a sensation I’d suffered in the same spot from the same weapon, in a different world.

Death Gun stood about fifteen feet away, the gleaming point of his estoc waving back and forth as if keeping some kind of rhythm. He would thrust from that stance without any warm-up. Just watching the sword wouldn’t help me dodge it.

I had to have thought the same thing in Laughing Coffin’s cave hideout. Back then, I must have noted the rarity of his weapon. But the midst of that battle was no time to remark on it.

A year and a half later, I finally said what I hadn’t then.

“That’s an…unusual weapon. In fact…I thought there weren’t any metal swords in GGO to begin with.”

A hissing laugh emerged from the depths of Death Gun’s hood. Next came his halting voice. “That’s very, poor study, for you, Black Swordsman. The Bayonet Creation skill, an offshoot of, the Knife Creation skill, lets you, make this. This is the, longest and, heaviest, I can do.”

“…Sadly, I doubt you can make my kind of sword, then,” I snapped back. He hissed again.

“So you still, like those, high-STR swords. Then you must, be unhappy, with that toy.”

The Kagemitsu lightsword in my hand did not like being referred to as a toy. It crackled with a few tiny sparks.

I shrugged and spoke up for my weapon. “It’s not that bad, really. I always wanted to use one of these things. Plus,” I continued, bringing the point up to midheight with a buzzing growl, “a sword’s a sword. As long as I can cut you and take down your HP bar, I’m happy.”

“Heh, heh, heh. You’ve got, spunk. But can you, pull it off?”

The red glowing eyes blinked unevenly. The metal mask, fashioned into a skull, seemed to smirk somehow.

“Black Swordsman, you have breathed, too much, foul air, in the, real world. If the old you, saw that clumsy, Vorpal Strike, he would be, disappointed.”

“…Yeah. Maybe. But the same goes for you. Or do you still think of yourself as a member of Laughing Coffin?”

“Ahh, so you, remember now.”

Hiss, hiss. Death Gun breathed like an exhaust vent, lazily waving his hands in a mock clapping gesture. The scraps of cloth he wore as a glove around his right hand shifted, exposing the symbol of a laughing coffin on the inside of his wrist.

“Then you, should know, already. The difference, between me, and you. I am, a true, red player, but you, are not. You only killed, to survive, out of fear. And you tried, not to think, about the meaning, to forget. A coward.”

“…!!”

For a moment, I had no words. He had struck me right in the most vital, central point.

How? How is he able to say that? When from the night I crossed swords with him, to our reunion in the dome yesterday, I never made contact once with him. Does he…does he have some kind of psychic power? Was my brilliant uncovering of his killing methods just nonsense in the end…?

As my eyesight began to warp, it took all of my concentration to stay standing. It was a miracle that I kept the lightsword from wavering. If I had, Death Gun would thrust from a standing position again, piercing me through the chest this time.

I let out a breath through clenched teeth and growled, “Maybe you’re right. But you’re not a murderer anymore. I’ve already got a very good idea of how you killed Zexceed, Usujio Tarako, Pale Rider, and possibly one more. It’s not because of the black pistol—not even because of you.”

“Oh? Then tell me, what it is.”

This was the showdown.

I glared in the enemy’s eyes with all of the power I could muster, putting the truth as I believed it into words.

“You used that camouflage cloak to hide in the regent’s office, watching the contestants enter their addresses into the BoB form. You had an accomplice sneak into their homes ahead of time and administer an injection timed to your shooting, making it look like you caused the resulting heart failure. That’s the truth.”

“…”

Finally, Death Gun was silent.

The red eyes in the darkness narrowed. I couldn’t determine if that meant my conjecture was right or wrong. I let his thick, choking hatred flow through me as I explained further.

“Though you might not know this, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has a database of all SAO players’ character names and actual names. When we find out your old handle, we’ll know your real name, address, and the methods of your crimes. Put an end to it all. Log out, and turn yourself in at the nearest police station.”

Again, silence.

The dry night wind caught the front of the tattered cloak, making the tendrils squirm like little insects. The live camera, REC symbol active, rose slightly in impatience. Nearly three minutes had passed since Death Gun and I faced off. The audience couldn’t hear us talk, so their confusion and irritation had to be reaching a peak. But for now, all I could do was continue our battle of words. If Death Gun backed up my assertions, there would be no need to cross blades.

But a few seconds later, all that came from his hood was the usual hissing laughter.

“That is, a very interesting, idea. But, it’s too bad, Black Swordsman. You cannot, stop me. Because you, will never, remember my, old name.”

“Wh…what? How can you be so sure?”

“Heh, heh. You’ve even forgotten, the reason why, you forgot. Listen…when the battle, was over, before you sent me, through the portal, to jail, I tried, to name myself. But you said, ‘I don’t want, to know your name, and I, don’t need to. I will never, see you, again.’”

“!!”

I stared, wide-eyed. Death Gun hissed at me again. “You don’t, know my, name. That’s why, you can’t, remember. You cannot, do anything. You will fall here, sprawled into the dust, and have no choice, but to watch as I kill the girl…”

There was a sharp whistle of air being cut. A silver curve glittered in the darkness.

“You can, do nothing!!”

Death Gun suddenly thrust out the estoc, like a spring-loaded puppet. Before I even realized what I was doing, my arm was moving the lightsword to intercept the needle aimed for my heart.

The energy blade growled, and the tip just barely intersected with the estoc’s trajectory. The pale plasma cut into the underbelly of the metal weapon.

It should have cut it in two. The Kagemitsu had sliced Sinon’s rifle bullet in half, after all. How could it not slice that slim piece of metal, too? I swung my sword up, prepared to cut right through Death Gun’s shoulder.

A very, very nasty sound came from the inside of my avatar.

My eyes went wide with shock as I stared down at the piece of metal piercing my solar plexus.

Death Gun’s estoc was slightly charred in one spot, but otherwise completely whole. The supposedly extreme power of the energy blade had passed right through it. But how was that possible?

The enemy plunged in further, pushing the estoc in to the hilt. With each inch of the metal, my HP gauge dropped precipitously. I gritted my teeth and put as much power as I could into a backward leap. The blade popped out and spilled bloody red effects in an airborne line.

Twice, then thrice, I hopped back, putting distance between us. Death Gun brought the estoc up to his mouth and waved it about, as though he were going to lick it.

“…Heh, heh. This is made, of the best, metal you can get, in the game. Battle cruiser, armor plating. Heh heh, heh.”

He tossed the cloak back and charged, done with the conversation. His right hand moved so fast it blurred, the little point of light leaving countless afterimages in the air. It was the first time he had showed off a combo attack. I recognized it as Star Splash, an eight-part, high-level, thrusting-sword skill…

Unable to parry with my sword, and prevented from adequate footwork by the shifting sands, I was helpless to stop the sharp needle from gouging me, over and over.

Kirito!

Sinon fought with all her self-control not to scream his name aloud, or squeeze the trigger.

Nearly half a mile away, the black-clad swordsman was knocked off his feet, spraying blood effects. To Sinon, who had never used a weapon that wasn’t a gun, his opponent’s sword proficiency seemed tremendous. She held her breath, wondering if that combination attack had finished all of Kirito’s HP, but fortunately, Kirito leapt backward, doing a backflip and pulling further away. There was no DEAD tag floating in the air.

Meanwhile, Death Gun needed no regrouping. He trailed after his prey like a ghost. The automated cameras seemed to sense an impending conclusion, as they were multiplying in number. Nearly ten cameras spread out around the two in a circle, turning the desert stage into its own little coliseum.

If only the Hecate’s scope was still there, she could snipe to assist Kirito. But at this distance, even Sinon couldn’t control the bullet circle with the naked eye. Even worse, if she fired wildly, she might hit Kirito.

You can do it. Hang in there, Kirito, Sinon prayed, forgetting the danger that her real body was in as she kneeled on the rock and clutched her hands together.

Kirito had killed people in the legendary Sword Art Online, even if it was to protect himself and others. That experience was shockingly similar to the past Shino bore. In that sense, his own mental anguish had to resemble Shino’s.

Kirito said that you couldn’t overcome terrible memories by compartmentalizing them and hiding them somewhere. You had to face them, accept them, and think about them.

At this moment, he was trying to turn his words into action. He was trying to stop the criminal named Death Gun, who brought the darkness of SAO with him.

It wasn’t Kirito’s strength that made him capable of this. It was his drive to be strong. He was a person who could accept, anguish, and suffer over his own weakness, and face his foe anyway. Strength was not a result—it was the process of aiming for something.

I want to talk with you right now. I want to tell you about what I’ve noticed, what I’ve felt. Is there anything I can do? Descending this rock and coming closer would have the opposite effect. The instant the Black Star gets pointed at me, Kirito will be helpless. On the other hand, sniping without a scope is just gambling. I don’t have nearly enough range with my MP7 sidearm. There must be something…some other way to help him…

“…!”

Suddenly, Sinon’s whole body shook.

There was. One kind of attack that she could actively attempt. She didn’t know how effective it would be—but it was worth a shot.

Sinon took a deep breath, clenched her jaw tight, and watched the distant battle.

Kirito!!

Asuna was just barely able to keep the scream trapped in her throat.

Although it didn’t have the same visual effects, the combination that Death Gun whipped out was clearly the eight-part Star Splash, a high-level sword skill that Asuna the Flash had once made good use of. It was a rapier skill that contained no slashing movements, which made it available to the estoc, an offshoot weapon of that category.

On the wall screen, she watched Kirito dash backward over and over, trying to maintain distance. But the cloaked player stayed right on him, gliding eerily over the sand. Kirito kept pulling away, just barely out of the estoc’s reach.

The tempo of the beeps coming from the heart monitor rose, causing Asuna to glance over. His heart rate was already up to 160 bpm. She tore her eyes off the screen and looked at Kazuto’s face.

Beads of sweat hung on his forehead, and it seemed to her like his expression was pained. His parted lips made way for short, quick pants. Nurse Aki had noticed this as well; her eyes were clearly worried behind her glasses.

“I make sure he gets plenty of water before he dives…but it’s been over four hours already. With how much he’s sweating, dehydration is a concern. You don’t suppose we could have him…temporarily disconnect, do you?” the nurse asked.

Asuna bit her lip and shook her head. “Nothing we say here will reach Kirito…and this is a PvP tournament, so I don’t even know if he’s capable of logging out…”

Based on ALO tournament events, she was familiar with the practice of temporarily preventing players from intentionally logging out, to protect against desperation log-outs by losing players—one of the cardinal sins of VRMMOs.

“But the AmuSphere does monitor blood flow in the brain, and it will automatically log him out if it detects dehydration is about to occur,” Asuna added.

The nurse nodded back. “I see. We’ll monitor him a bit longer, then. We can’t go giving him an IV when he isn’t even technically a patient, after all.”

“Ah…of course.”

Her voice stiffened against her will. If he had to be hooked up now, he might as well be back in SAO.

But there was one major difference between then and now: Kazuto wasn’t wearing a NerveGear with its deadly trap installed, but a guaranteed-safe AmuSphere. So there shouldn’t be any danger if she just reached down and yanked the silver rings off of Kazuto’s head. Kirito would disappear from the desert footage and instantly return to the hospital bed—and Asuna’s side. The sword of the terrible foe bearing the name of death would not reach him.

It took all of Asuna’s willpower to resist the impulse to do this.

Kirito/Kazuto was fighting with all of his swordsman’s instincts. She could not interfere with that process.

But there had to be something she could do. Some way she could reach him where he fought in that far-off world, from his side right here.

“Mama, his hand,” came Yui’s little voice from the cell phone speaker. “Take Papa’s hand. The AmuSphere’s physical signal interrupt isn’t as complete as the NerveGear’s was. I’m sure he’ll feel the warmth of your hand. My hand can’t touch him in the world he’s in now, but…you can do it…for me…”

Her voice quavered and stumbled toward the end. Pierced through the heart, Asuna shook her head briskly. “No…that’s not true, Yui. You can reach him. We’ll cheer Papa on together.”

She put the phone into Kazuto’s limp hand and squeezed it between both of hers. Despite the considerable warmth of the heating, Kazuto was cold as ice. She had to be careful not to squeeze too hard, so as not to set off the auto-disengage feature. So it was that Asuna tried to subtly warm him up as much as she could.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the images on the screen, and prayed.

Hang in there, Kirito. Keep trying, for the sake of what you believe in. I’ll always be at your side. I’ll always be behind you, watching your back and supporting you.

Faintly, but certainly, his cold hand twitched.

He was tough.

In speed, balance, and timing. He was a master of all. Very few of the front-line players could boast of such considerable, polished skill.

So why? When he was a lieutenant of Laughing Coffin, the man who now played Death Gun was barely able to keep up with my sword. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so easy for me to knock him down to half HP and send him scurrying off to lick his wounds.

Which meant he had changed after that, probably during the half a year that he spent in Blackiron Palace’s prison. He’d honed his skills, living off his burning desire for revenge against me and the others who brought Laughing Coffin to ruin. There was strength to be gained by practicing sword skills over and over, even if it didn’t result in more col or experience. How many thousands, how many millions, of times did he practice these moves in that gloomy, chilly prison? The exact movements necessary to pull off the estoc’s attacks had been burned into his nerves.

But I knew that when it came to the number of swings, I was at least his equal. The problem was that the photon sword I carried now was far lighter than the swords I was familiar with. It felt entirely different. A single attack like Vorpal Strike was one thing, but it would be very tricky to pull off a combination attack. On top of that, Death Gun was not going to give me enough time to execute a major attack. He maintained close proximity, overwhelming me with a variety of moves. While I dodged as best I could, that sharp point caught my avatar from time to time, taking chunks of HP with each bite. I was down to barely a third of my health.

Of course, even if his pointed weapon took the rest of my HP and knocked me out, I wouldn’t die if he shot me with that black pistol. I never typed my address into the terminal in the regent’s office, and he had no way of finding out the location of my real body.

Maybe I’d been leaning too heavily on the truth of my safety. I was so concerned with the black pistol that I failed to notice the true power of the player holding the gun. If that was the case, I’d earned this outcome. He was still in the game of death, and I had drifted away from it in body and mind.

It was far too late to realize all of this now.

But that didn’t mean that accepting defeat was an option. I wouldn’t suffer a single wound in real life. But as he swore to me earlier, Sinon was within the firing range of his black gun, as she waited on the boulder in the distance. If I went down, he would attack Sinon. If she took a single bullet from that handgun, his accomplice would do his dark duty on her real body.

One moment. I just needed one moment. Just one chance to break through his onslaught.

As far as attack power went, my lightsword was far more potent than his narrow estoc. If I landed a heavy critical blow, I knew it would eradicate all of his HP. I just couldn’t get enough space to do it. He wouldn’t fall for any half-executed feints, and his estoc could pass right through my energy blade, so I couldn’t keep him at bay with a powerful swing. What to do, what to do…

Tist-tist-tist. Three quick thrusts hissed at my right cheek and one caught it, sending my HP bar into the red at last.

The stream of light from my cheek turned my vision crimson.

And Death Gun’s red eyes flickered fiercer than before, certain of his victory.

Red…The estoc fencer in Laughing Coffin had red eyes, too. My memory creaked and groaned. A crack ran through the heavy lid that kept it down.

That’s right…I had refused to hear his name. I didn’t want anything to do with him ever again. I just wanted to forget that night of madness, blood, screams, and hatred, and not a second too soon.

But in reality, I couldn’t do it.

I didn’t forget everything. I just pretended that I did. I was fooling myself, nothing more. I’d shut down the neural pathways to a whole chunk of memory, and convinced myself that something that did exist was invisible to me…

Death Gun pulled back the estoc, preparing for the finishing blow. The cold gleam in the tip caused discrete images to flash out of my distant memory.

Just before the vanquishing party left, we held our final meeting at the base of the Divine Dragon Alliance. At the meeting, we went over all the information we had on Laughing Coffin again. The abilities of PoH, their leader. The weapons and skills of his trusted lieutenants. Their descriptions—and names.

It was mentioned that two of the officers had their own distinctive colors. One was black. He liked to use a poisoned knife, and his name was…yeah, it was Johnny Black. Klein turned to me and said in all seriousness, “Don’t fight him. We won’t know which one of you is which.”

The other was red, but not all over. The estoc-wielding fencer had customized his eyes and hair to be crimson red, and wore a gray, hooded cloak with an upside-down red cross on it. Asuna the Flash, vice commander of the Knights of the Blood, did not appreciate this unsubtle play on the guild’s colors and crest. He was the one I crossed swords with right at the start of the battle, the man who swore he would kill me one day and tried to tell me his name as we cleaned up after the fight.

Now, a year and a half later and into an entirely different virtual world, the man with the estoc and the tattered cloak had come to make good on his promise. His name was…

“Xaxa.”

The short little word that tumbled out of my mouth, pronounced like Zazza, threw off the course of the metal rod that plunged toward my heart. Instead, it grazed my chest and lurched past me, but I barely even registered the sensation.

“Red-Eyed Xaxa. That’s your name.”

A number of things happened after that point in quick succession.

A red line flew in from behind me and pierced the center of Death Gun’s hood without a sound.

It was not a bullet, but a bullet line—Sinon. I understood her intention in an instant. She was attacking him with the bullet line itself. A last attack, wringing out all of her experience, intuition, and will to fight. A phantom bullet.

With the instinct of an animal sensing a predator, Death Gun leaped backward. A growl of rage escaped his skull mask. He must have noticed right away that Sinon would not risk the danger of shooting me by accident. But the shock of me dropping his real name had dulled that realization. So his body reacted to the phantom shot and took evasive maneuvers before his mind could stop it.

This was my last chance. The bullet line feint wouldn’t work again. I couldn’t let Sinon’s opportunity go to waste. I lunged forward, chasing after Death Gun.

But there was a cruel fate in store. He began to disappear—the Optical Camo. I could follow the footprints to track his location, but there was no way to ensure my lightsword would hit his crit point with any accuracy. I had to finish it with one strike, or his counter would knock out my remaining HP.

Then, an even more surprising phenomenon:

My left hand moved on its own, as if guided by someone else. My freezing, nervous hand was enveloped, warmed, and guided by the familiar hand of another. It moved to my left waist and grabbed something tight. It was the other weapon whose existence I had completely forgotten: the Five-Seven. The moment it slid out of the holster and its weight registered on my arm, a single thought etched into my mind and burst into flame.

“Rrraaaaahh!!”

I howled. Leaped. Twisted left, then bolted forward in a spiral like a bullet.

Before me, Death Gun was in the process of disappearing entirely. I swung my left hand at the outline of the wavering silhouette.

In my normal dual blades configuration, my left blade would jump up from ground level to break the enemy’s defense, but I was holding a pistol now, not a sword. But who decided that a gun couldn’t execute a sword skill? I held the trigger down, in the same way I would slice the sword upward.

The bullets flew in a diagonal line, striking the invisible object and erupting with sparks. Death Gun’s body reappeared from their midst. His camo was exposed, his avatar open to my attack.

With all of my inertia and weight in a clockwise spin, I struck downward from the left with my lightsword. It was the Dual Blades charging attack, Double Circular.

The energy blade bit deep into Death Gun’s right shoulder, severing diagonally through the torso until it passed out his left flank. The black pistol was holstered there, and it too was split down the middle by the blade’s precision, exploding in a burst of brilliant orange.

The severed avatar, ripped cloak, and arc of flame danced beneath the full moon.

The long, long flight finally came to its end…

And with a series of heavy thuds, Death Gun’s upper and lower halves landed a slight distance away. A half second later, the long, narrow estoc plunged into the sand between the two of us.

As I slumped to my knees, I caught a very faint whisper.

“…It’s, not…over. We won’t…let it end… He will…ensure…”

The DEAD tag that floated over the severed halves of Death Gun’s avatar brought a premature end to his statement. I slowly rose and looked down at the “corpse” below me.

Now that Death Gun had lost his tattered cloak that was more a symbol of his avatar than his actual body, there was very little to distinguish him, aside from the skull mask. I gazed into the lens without their signature red color and murmured, “No…it is over, Xaxa. We’ll find your accomplice in no time. This is the end of Laughing Coffin’s bloodshed, once and for all.”

I turned around and dragged my wounded, battered body west through the desert.

How many hundreds of steps, how many hundreds of yards did I trudge? Eventually, a pair of small, booted feet came into view, and I lifted my head at last.

It was a small sniper girl with a scopeless rifle in her hands, and a gentle smile on her face.

Sinon opened her mouth to say something, but no words emerged.

She couldn’t even state for certain what emotions were running through her. Waves of heat roiled in her chest. She clutched the Hecate even harder.

At last, Kirito cracked a slight grin. He put his Five-Seven back into the holster, clenched his fist, and held it out. Sinon raised her own and bumped it to his.

“…It’s over,” the lightswordsman mumbled, lowering his fist and looking straight upward. Sinon followed his gaze.

The clouds had drifted away at some point, replaced by a curtain of stars that all competed to outshine the others. It might have been the first time she’d ever seen stars in this game.

The sky of GGO was always covered in thick clouds, owing to the effects of the apocalyptic war that caused it to collapse. The gloomy sunset coloring stayed constant throughout the day, and even the night sky was a clouded, bloody red.

But according to a prophecy by a wise old NPC in town, one day the poisons of the earth would be purified, the sands would turn white again, the clouds would dissipate, and the light of stars and starships would return to the night sky. No players took that boilerplate background setting seriously, but perhaps this desert was not the wasteland the players normally traversed, but the promised land of the future.

Sinon silently watched the glinting of the brilliant night sky, and the wreckage of the spaceships that flowed between the stars like a river.

Eventually, Kirito said, “We should probably put an end to the tournament now. I doubt the audience is very happy about this.”

“…Yeah. Good point.”

Here and there in the night sky, the pale blue cameras blinked in impatient annoyance. Kirito smirked at the sight, then got serious and took a step closer to her. “That eliminates the danger of this tournament. Now that we’ve beaten Death Gun, his accomplice should be leaving you alone. Remember, their goal is to create a legend that anyone shot by his black pistol in GGO dies in real life, not to just murder anyone willy-nilly. So there shouldn’t be any danger with logging out now…but just in case, you should call the police.”

“But…what am I going to tell them? How in the world do I convince them that there are people plotting simultaneous murders inside a VRMMO and outside?”

Kirito bit his lip for a moment, then nodded. “Good point… I was hired by someone in the government, so I could have him take care of it…but I can’t just ask for your name and address here…”

The swordsman’s glance shifted away. He understood that asking for someone’s real life details in a VRMMO was the worst, most boorish of faux pas.

But it only took Sinon a second to make up her mind. “It’s fine. I’ll tell you.”

“Huh? B-but…”

“Seems pretty stupid to get hung up on that now. I mean…this was the first time I actually opened up and told someone about my past on my own…”

Kirito’s eyes widened a bit, but he soon agreed, “I guess you have a point. Now that I think about it, the same might go for me…”

If she hesitated now, the shy part of herself would appear and decide not to go through with it, so Sinon hoisted the Hecate onto her shoulder and took a step forward. She put her lips up to Kirito’s ear and whispered, low enough that no one could hear, “My name is Shino Asada. I live in Yoncho-me in Yushima, Bunkyo Ward of Tokyo…”

Once she had listed her apartment building and number, Kirito turned to her in surprise. “Yushima?! No kidding…I’m diving from Ochanomizu in Chiyoda Ward.”

“Wait…what?! Then we’re right next to each other,” Sinon nearly shouted, flabbergasted. The only things separating Kirito from her home were Kasuga Street and Kuramae-bashi Street. Kirito’s eyes narrowed a bit, and he grunted.

“In that case, maybe it would be quicker if I just run over as soon as I log out…”

“Wha… You’re…”

She was nearly about to ask, You’re coming over? but held her mouth shut in time. She cleared her throat awkwardly and resumed, “N-no, it’s fine. There’s a friend nearby who I can trust…”

Kyouji Shinkawa, aka Spiegel, the boy who invited her into this game, lived in nearby Hongo, the second son of a medical practitioner. He’d come right over if she called, and he had to be watching the tournament from start to finish, so she knew she’d have to explain why she had been working so closely with Kirito.

“Plus, he’s the son of a doctor, so he can help in an emergency,” she added as an excuse.

Kirito noted seriously. “Don’t even joke about that. But…it is a bit of a relief to hear. Anyway, once I log off, I’ll contact my supervisor and have him explain the situation to the police. Even at the latest, they’ll send a car around in fifteen…no, ten minutes.”

“Hmm, all right. Hopefully they’ll catch the accomplice…”

“Yeah…”

He looked a bit worried. Sinon glared at him. “So, you’re going to make me expose my information, and just walk away?”

“Oh, er, s-sorry. My name is Kazuto Kirigaya. Like I said, I’m diving from Ochanomizu, but my home is Kawagoe, in Saitama Prefecture,” he babbled. Sinon pored over his statement and couldn’t help but giggle, despite the seriousness of the situation.

“ ‘Kazuto Kirigaya.’ Kiri and to, combined to form ‘Kirito.’ You’re right, that is cliché.”

“H-hey, look who’s talking,” he said, grinning slightly. He looked up at the cameras overhead and changed the subject. “We’ll need to finish the BoB if we want to log out, though… What’s the plan, Sinon? Do we settle this with another duel, like yesterday?”

Sinon realized that she had completely forgotten about the rematch with Kirito that had burned such a hole in her. She looked at the beautiful face across from her and thought for a second.

“Strength comes…not from results…but the process of what you aim for…”

“Huh? You say something?”

“N-no, just talking to myself. Listen, you look like hell. I won’t get any enjoyment or bragging rights for beating someone in your condition. We can save the duel for the next BoB final,” she smirked. Kirito’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and he grimaced.

“Meaning I’m not allowed to convert back to my original game until the fourth tournament happens?”

“Hey, you can convert as many times as you want. Just don’t assume you can waltz in and beat me that way. Anyway…let’s wrap this one up.”

“But how? It’s a battle royale, so one of us has to go all the way to zero, or else there’s no winner, right?”

“Well, it’s rare, but you can have two winners—the first BoB on the North American server was a dual championship. The person who was supposed to win got cocky and fell victim to a grenade from the grave.”

“Grenade from the grave? What’s that?”

“When a person who’s about to lose rolls out a grenade, hoping to take down the other person with them. Here, take this.”

Sinon reached into her pouch and pulled out a black sphere, placing it in Kirito’s upturned palm. She found the detonator timer, sticking out from the top like the stem of a fruit, and set it to about five seconds.

It was the plasma grenade that she’d rushed to pick up from Yamikaze’s side, once she confirmed that Kirito had killed Death Gun. She’d been ready for this ending since that moment.

Kirito finally realized what he was holding. His eyes bulged, and he nearly tossed it away on sheer instinct. Sinon put her arms around him and held him tight to stop him from doing so.

A blinding light erupted between them, melting Kirito’s grimace and Sinon’s grin into a screen of white.

The total time of the match was two hours, four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.

The battle-royale final of the third Bullet of Bullets was over.

The result: simultaneous victory for Sinon and Kirito.